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Posted August 2026I recently had the chance to sit down with Judge Kristi H. Johnson of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi to talk about her first six years on the federal bench, including how she got there and what she has learned along the way.
Judge Johnson first became interested in serving as a judge while working only a few steps from the bench. As a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock and later to Judge Leslie H. Southwick of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, she saw both the demands of judging and the meaningful impact a careful judge can have on the lives of the people who come before the court. The experience impressed upon her the importance of judges who care deeply about the law and are committed to applying it faithfully.
The road from those clerkships to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi was not the product of a rigid plan. Judge Johnson describes the path as largely organic. She had heard that a lawyer is more likely to be struck by lightning than to become a federal judge, and she understood that timing and circumstance would have to align. Still, she made intentional career choices—particularly her decisions to seek a second federal clerkship and practice in federal court—that would prepare her if the opportunity ever came. As she put it, she did not follow a strict roadmap, but she made deliberate choices to be ready if lightning struck.
Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest obstacle in Judge Johnson's path to becoming a judge was not a lack of qualifications. It was self-doubt. She is the first woman to serve as an Article III judge in the Southern District of Mississippi. Although it would have been easy, Judge Johnson says, to question whether she really belonged on the federal bench, she focused instead on her experience and the perspective she could bring. She also reminded herself that there isn't one path to the bench, and the judiciary is stronger when it reflects a range of backgrounds and experiences. In the end, Judge Johnson refused to let self-doubt hold her back.
Then lightning struck in November 2019, when the offices of Senators Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith called to ask whether she was interested in interviewing for a federal judgeship. Judge Johnson met with both senators the day before Thanksgiving. A few weeks later, they submitted her name to the White House for Judge Keith Starrett's vacancy. She then interviewed with a group of lawyers from the White House and the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Policy and soon learned that she was the presumptive nominee, subject to an FBI background investigation. The investigation concluded in early February 2020, and the President announced her nomination the next month.
The timing made the rest of the confirmation process anything but ordinary. The COVID-19 pandemic halted travel and changed Senate operations. After months of waiting, Judge Johnson received notice in early September that her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing would take place the next week by Zoom. She appeared on a panel with five other nominees and later answered written questions for the record. Then the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett reshaped the Senate's calendar. A COVID outbreak caused additional delays. Judge Johnson's panel was finally voted out of committee in late October, and the full Senate confirmed her nomination on November 17, 2020. She officially became a federal judge when the President signed her commission on December 1. She was sworn in and began work the next day.
While the nomination process unfolded, Judge Johnson was also serving as Mississippi's first Solicitor General. She had interviewed for that role with Attorney General Lynn Fitch during the same period in which she interviewed at the White House. She began as Solicitor General in March 2020—the month pandemic lockdowns began and her federal nomination was announced—and remained in the position until she received her judicial commission in December.
Her transition to the bench also produced a practical problem: the robe. Judge Johnson ordered one online as soon as the Senate confirmed her, but delivery lagged while court dates approached. She ordered a second robe with expedited shipping. The second arrived in time, and the duplication proved useful. She now keeps one robe in her Jackson chambers and another in Hattiesburg, where she often conducts criminal hearings.
Robe logistics sorted, the harder work of judging remained. No single prior job, Judge Johnson says, fully prepared her for the bench; each contributed something different. Her district court clerkship gave her a view of how a good judge manages a courtroom, handles sometimes difficult counsel, makes evidentiary rulings in real time, and gives careful attention even to routine orders. At the Fifth Circuit, she watched district court rulings tested on appeal—an experience that made her a more careful writer and still influences the way she drafts every opinion.
Private practice, meanwhile, gave Judge Johnson a continuing appreciation for the pressures lawyers bring into court: demanding clients, discovery disputes, limited budgets, and competing obligations. Her years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney broadened her federal litigation experience. Civil matters exposed her to discovery, experts, summary judgment, and trial. Criminal matters taught her the gravity of a federal courtroom, where liberty may be at stake and deadlines are unforgiving. Her service as Solicitor General taught her how a record is made, why cases fall apart on review, and what separates a defensible ruling from one that gets reversed. That experience translates directly to how she now builds a record and crafts opinions with one eye on the Fifth Circuit.
For Judge Johnson, those experiences share a common theme. A law clerk serves the court. A private lawyer serves the client. An Assistant U.S. Attorney serves the United States. A Solicitor General serves the State. A district judge serves the Constitution. “You are never the point,” she said. “The law is the point.”
That philosophy is tested most heavily in criminal sentencings, which Judge Johnson has found more difficult than she expected. Recommending a sentence as an advocate, she has learned, is very different from imposing one. A sentencing decision affects not only the defendant, the victim, and the community, but also families on both sides of the courtroom. The hardest part of judging more generally is knowing that every ruling can affect someone's life, liberty, or livelihood—and that judges carry much of that weight alone. Supportive colleagues and court staff, she said, make the difficult days easier.
And despite the difficult days, Judge Johnson loves her job. The most enjoyable part, she says, is the sheer variety of cases and legal issues that she encounters. No two days are alike, and she particularly enjoys the energy of the courtroom during jury trials.
That enthusiasm for the courtroom shapes the advice that Judge Johnson gives to lawyers who rarely find themselves in one. For lawyers who do not practice regularly in federal court, she emphasizes that federal litigation is often motion practice rather than trial. Many cases settle or are decided on written submissions, which means a brief may be counsel's only opportunity to advocate directly to the judge. Lawyers should put their best arguments in writing rather than assume they will receive a second chance at oral argument. In court, her guidance is clear: be prepared, honest, concise, and respectful. Candor is essential. A judge can work with a lawyer who is mistaken; carelessness with the facts or the record is another matter.
Judge Johnson also encourages lawyers to speak with one another before filing a motion. A brief telephone call can resolve evidentiary objections, narrow a motion in limine, or eliminate a dispute that would otherwise require hours of drafting and briefing. And she cautions against throwing every conceivable argument into a brief and hoping one sticks. “More isn't better in federal court,” she says. “It's just more.” Counsel should identify the strongest claims or defenses, sharpen them, and trust them.
Judge Johnson's own courtroom practices reflect what she appreciated as an advocate. She values consistent enforcement of the Federal Rules and Local Rules because predictability promotes fairness. She also tries to ensure that lawyers have room to make their case and leave the courtroom feeling heard, even when they do not prevail. One thing she avoids is tardiness. A self-described Navy brat, Judge Johnson considers punctuality part of her DNA. She starts court on time—and sometimes early. If she is ever late, she jokes, someone should send the U.S. Marshals because something has gone terribly wrong.
Judge Johnson's judicial philosophy is straightforward: follow the law as written. She looks to statutory text and controlling precedent and applies the law even when she dislikes the result. She agrees with Justice Antonin Scalia, who famously said that a “judge who always likes the results he reaches is a bad judge.” Her role, she says, is to apply the law to the facts rather than create the law. To that end, she welcomes a properly grounded motion to reconsider. A lawyer will not hurt her feelings—or make her angry—by asking her to take another look if they believe she got it wrong. She is equally committed to issuing timely decisions. She believes that litigants deserve prompt rulings, and delay rarely improves a case.
That same discipline extends to how she builds her chambers. Judge Johnson has three term law clerks, generally serving one-year terms. Academic performance, writing samples, and recommendations help determine whom she interviews, but the interview itself is intentionally relaxed. By that point she already knows the candidate can do the work. She wants to know whether the person will be a dependable teammate during a demanding year and whether the candidate will fit well with chambers and court staff. She considers her clerks part of her family and remains in contact with them after their service ends.
Life in chambers includes another regular presence: Judge Johnson's rescue dog Ella, who accompanies her to work most days. That fact has some influence on what lies beneath the robe. Judge Johnson ordinarily wears business attire because she never knows who she might run into when she walks Ella outside chambers. “The robe covers a lot,” she observed, “but it doesn't help much out in the parking lot.”
What comes through most clearly after talking with Judge Johnson is that the job still feels a little surreal for her. Nearly six years in, she has not lost the sense that lightning struck. She talks about the bench less like a job she earned and more like an honor she does not take for granted—a chance to serve her country as a federal judge.
